Two stories, one planet

Well, last week China set a price on carbon pollution as this story from a Chinese paper (The China Daily) notes:

Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission … Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.”

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, billions of US dollars (and perhaps Australian dollars if our troops are accommodated in the same way as the US’s), and the lives of US troops are being lost ferrying air con fuel and equipment to buildings which are too hot or too cold for comfort there. According to retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who was Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician in Iraq, “over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts. … And will take lots of big fuel trucks (a k a Taliban Targets) off the road, expediting the end of the conflict.”